in which the Pimms loosens the brain

Its been a hectic few days for me with a rather wide range of challenges and a consequently diminutive amount of blog posting. There's probably an inverse square law about blogging content and time, and I suspect I'm suffering from it right now.

It amounts to lots happening but a consequent lack of time (and in some cases technology) to scribble it into the blog. Add to that the rather generous Pimms I've just been handed and I can see why it can sometimes all go rather wobbly.

A few days ago I was in a car park next to a colleague's car. He opened the back doors and out hopped two smart looking Rottweilers, who immediately wanted to become my next best friends.

He'd driven them to the meeting (a round trip over two days of circa 700 miles) because his wife was away and of course they needed to be looked after. They were as good as gold whilst we attended the meeting and then he was going to take them onward to an expedition in the scenic area we'd reached for the meeting.

I, meantime, was planning the equally long drive home.

I guess the point of this is to remember the work/life thing and to figure the ways to integrate things together as much as possible, Sometimes the work wins for a while (like it is with me at the moment) but the trick is to find ways to redress the balance rather than let it become too one-sided.

In other news, four red arrow planes just flew over the garden low enough to make ripples in the Pimms. Brilliant.

My artist's impression of the two Rottweilers is slightly inaccurate; the triangular ears pointed downwards and they were not green. They did have those spiky collars.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

No prizes for guessing Switzerland today.

I travelled part of the way in a smooth and exceptionally punctual IC train as I headed from Geneva for my meeting.

It's another country where scenery police outlaw unsightly views and I noticed even the towering cranes in Lausanne had Edelweiss pictures adorning them to assist them to blend in.

window seat

I still prefer the window seats on planes.

Plenty of people prefer aisle seats so that they can get out without disturbing others and so forth, but I'm still a sucker for the view. I can't help it, but I like looking out of the window. Whether its clouds, distant planes, stars, or the ground on a fortunate day with clear views, I just prefer to have the option.

Thursday its the Alps, as we travelled back from Italy, and there was good views of mountains, lakes, winding roads and snow. It may not bee cool to be taking photos of this, but I don't care. Its great to see the earth from this viewpoint.

Milan again

From meetings in Kingston upon Thames in the morning to the streets of Milan by the early evening, on the way to a cafe for a light evening meal.

I was staying centrally in preparation for tomorrow's meetings, which were in the same part of town. Milan's central streets can be as busy as London, so an optimum location for the morning could save vital minutes.

I didn't hear the England score until I was in Italy and still only have the vaguest notion of how the team performed.

continuous wavelet transforms mark an entire region in the time-scale plane

Another hectic day of meetings today, whilst also trying to get a piece of major project moved along. Som etim es the re are ju st to o man y inte rru ptions.

The most productive time was when I escaped alone, for an hour, in a small park, where I was able to set up a mini work environment in the sunshine.

I did have all the technology - laptops and blackberries - around me, but the simplest pencil and paper solution allowed me to make some good progress on getting the stuff done.

Tomorrow it's Wednesday, so it must be Milan.

bread on the night

I was sent on a mission involving an unusual aisle of the supermarket during the weekend.

My target was to find moulding icing, which is not part of my usual spectrum of shopping possibilities. The risk was that it would take me at slow speeds close to areas that I don't usually visit. Multiple passes too, because it wasn't called moulding icing and came in a chunky oblong box in a choice of white or ivory*.

The danger of slow speed meant I'd have time to note the adjacent area containing the flours and bakery products. I loitered just too long in the bread-making area. Like a tractor beam those stone ground flours were beckoning, along with various brands of baker's yeast.

First, and almost accidentally, a pack of seeded flour fell into my trolley, and then a couple of others, with me partly drawn to the brightness of the packaging and those cursive artisan scripts.

I knew I'd gone too far, when I arrived home and found myself smuggling the heavy bag of excess baking products past the security scanners. There was nothing for it, I'd have to get my hands into some dough.

Hours passed and that tell-tale aroma of bread in preparation began to waft through the scene. Would I be rumbled? Not as I was also preparing a relatively spicy evening meal.

By the next morning, it was too much to hide. The first bread was ready in all its glory. I like to think of it as different in a good way from the bread in the supermarkets. And it seems to have met with approval. It's only Monday and we are onto the second loaf.

And the moulding icing? The expresso cake guitar it eventually adorned as frets and fingerboard was also a great success.

*- reading this back, I'm slightly surprised if it was really called Ivory in these sensitive times. But I know it wasn't called beige.

messing about on the Thames

We were messing about on the river during Sunday, amongst other things.

Here's Tower Bridge just after we'd passed under it, and at the point where it is letting through a traditional red-brown sailed Thames barge.

We'd been having a Latin afternoon accompanied with a dash of rock music and were, at this precise moment, on the way to a riverside pub.

World Cup: Pandorica vs England

The stadium picture is not exactly high definition, not least because my own eyesight has been affected by the pollen over the last few days. Even with anti-histamines, the lumpy air has some how 'got me'.

But even if it hadn't, I don't think it would have improved my view of the world cup football. That's two matches with England where some of the allegedly finest players have struggled against teams which are considerably lower in the pundits' rankings.

With my recent pollen affliction, I can understand the irritation to the very eyeballs of the followers of England who have trekked to South Africa to support some rather lack-lustre football.

It's not a completely fair comparison, but my enjoyment from the latest episode of Doctor Who was vastly higher than watching a set of ponderous and slightly disenchanted white shirts be outmanoeuvred by a set of enthusiastic, industrious, camouflaged green shirts during Friday's match.

I realise that the amassed forces of an imaginary universe may be pitched against our heroes in one show, but the ostensibly less formidable opponents in the football show didn't even have a good backing track, just that parping noise.

Monotonous and irritating rather than dramatic. I know which one I'd miss and I know which one I'll definitely record in case I'm out next week.

motorway

Another evening on the motorways, tonight with a surprising number of high-performance police vehicles overtaking me along the outside lane.

There was a mixture of cars comprising unmarked saloons with blue lights and chequered motorway units and they passed me at few minute intervals.

At one stage I thought it was some kind of training exercise, as they sped along with their headlights doing that alternate flashing thing.

Then later I saw a few trucks flashing their emergency lights and a helicopter hovering over a field adjacent to the motorway. As I drove closer I could see the extensive collection of police cars pulled onto the hard shoulder and what appeared to be an extra car being searched whilst its occupants were being escorted to one of the waiting police vehicles.

Of course, my eyes were mainly on the traffic ahead, but it certainly looked as if some drama was playing out by the roadside.

new lion squeaker

We even bought a new lion squeaker for the World Cup football, caught in the soccer madness that had led me to expect Sainsbury's to be empty.

Wrong.

The pre-match car park was almost full which made me wonder how many had decided to watch the afternoon matches ahead of England vs USA.

Like many, we scrunched down in front of the telly, with a few beers and munchies as well as the attractive distressed England beach towel(£3), the lion that shouts 'goal' and 'penalty' when you press a button (£2) and some hair extensions in Union Jack colours(£1), which confusingly are the same as the USA's.

We had well and truly invested in this match, in as ITV described, "the unforgettable experience'' of its High Definition splendour.

By now, everyone knows the result, so it is almost superfluous to mention the England team performance, except for the lightning fast first five minutes which led to a spectacular goal. Unfortunately, our television didn't show it because the ITV HD service decided to play a car advert. We were most confused, especially when the match returned and someone said 'look England have scored'.

We missed the whole goal and the post goal cheers because of the wrong button pushing by someone at ITV command central - who are already blaming another organisation for the problem.

As play resumed, the HD allowed us to see the layering in Cappello's hair style, but for some reason the on field play was sometimes rather jerky, as if the HD frame buffer was not keeping up.

I can't swear to it, but it then looked to me as if the rest of the game (after the jerky bits) was shown in standard definition on the HD channel. Don't worry ITV, its our little secret, but annoying to those who've gone out specially to get HD for the occasion.

Well, so what to make of the match? I suppose a few of the US players are also in the UK leagues, so they should be OK. I still think that a country that positions its soccer as the national game should be able to trounce a country where its something of an afterthought, behind their version of Football and Rounders.

Oh well, c'mon engerland etc.

A595

My work meetings routed me to the west of the Lake District on Friday and I found my sat-nav sending me along the A595 and through the town of Whitehaven, which is where the recent tragic gunman events unfolded.

It's one of those moments where something detached becomes that bit more real, as I drove through the centre and past the taxi stand where there were flowers piled high.

I'm not familiar with this area across the far side of the Lakes, but Whitehaven was showing itself well in the sunshine and with many people going about their daily business. There was a noticable police presence and some TV vans with satellite dishes, but overall I was struck by the apparent normality a few days on from the shocking events.

business on the road

One of those days where in the morning I'm passing the elephants that currently stand in the middle of Sloane Square and by the evening I'm in the Lake District. Along the way I've dialled various conference meetings before the longish drive to the other side of the Lakes.

At some point along the way I stopped in the Pennines to buy some milk before everywhere closed and as I exited my air conditioned car I caught the blast of Pennine air with grass, peat, and a dampness that reminded me of trekking around the area with a backpack.

Tonight's stop was brief before onward chasing the late night sun, which was setting far more towards the North than we customarily see down South. Indeed, as it approach eleven pm, there was still light on the horizon and almost a sense of early morning.

But I had to reach my evening destination, to be 'in position' for Friday.